The trickster

Since I live by the sea, it goes without saying that I live alongside a variety of seabirds. We get most of them: common gulls, herrings gulls, black backed gulls(lesser and probably greater at times of storm) plus the usual sweep of terns and so on. Die hard seaside residents dislike the gulls because of their chaotic behaviour.

This handsome chappie was rooting through the chip wrappers at the clifftop car park, looking for a stray chip or fragment of sausage, and chucking the paper left, right and centre. It’s quite a “nice” area, and I can say without fear of contradiction that most locals will object to such a mess being made.

Me, I took his photo. He’s only doing what he needs to do. It reminded me of the archetype found in many cultures of the trickster. Coyote in certain NA myths, Loki in Norse legend; just a few examples of the beings that play tricks on us to get us to wake up. NA spirituality has a sort of “order” of sacred clowns, the Heyokah, who are regarded with equal measures of frustration and approval.

I’ve never been able to resist stirring things up, of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, just to see what might happen. I do it even when I know I oughtn’t and for that, in all seriousness, I am sorry for the disruption I sometimes cause. Trying to teach a friend’s Furby to say, “F*** off!” was not a good thing to do but she did forgive me(maybe because the Furby didn’t catch on very quickly) . I’ve done some stupid things in my time, just because I couldn’t help myself. I won’t make a list of them here, but on reflection I don’t think they were all BAD things to do.

We do need people who do not act according to society’s norms all the time, because norms need challenging some times and we need to reestablish where the boundaries need to be.

And somebody needs to remember to shut the damn bins before the gulls get in!